Ode to Varuna

For the longest time, it thinks that something's wrong with it.

For an even longer time after that, it knows that something's wrong with it.

It realizes that the days are too short and yet too long at the same time. While the hours of sunlight and light yellow skies are fewer now than ever before, they seem to stretch on forever, florescent blue blending with the thick blue smear of polluted night until neither can be distinguished from one another. The buildings shine eternally with a glaring, clinical light that cleans away the darkness and bleaches the day, scrubbing away at both so that nothing remains but an eternal cubicle cleanliness, an eternal lack of lacking, an eternal feeling that everything is revealed and that nothing can lurk out of sight and strike, drive murky claws of doubt and primal impulse into its modernized core, its technology, its survival. Holoscreens and digital clocks serve to remind it and its people of the time, the date, the schedule, but in the end these reminders are nothing but pretty sparkling toys – in the end, they serve to only put a mask over the stainless-steel skeleton that was once humanity and push it forward on the conveyer belt towards destruction.

The city of Varuna is dying.

It does not have a mind, but it still thinks, feels even; the thousands of feet that trod its gleaming streets and the hundreds of voices that echo in its empty alleys all follow a basic path, a basic pattern that has not varied for years, decades – a length of time that is hard to determine now, as nothing ever changes within its secure walls. Like beads on string, like pulses of light on circuit boards, they move along in unison towards the final goal, the big picture. Some stall, some speed, but they all get there in time, have all gotten there in time for years. They are uniform and yet separate, together and yet bitterly alone – aware of their mortality and comforted by the knowledge that when they are gone the world of their home, the world of their city, will not suffer for it. Each face that fades from view will be replaced by another that is more or less the same; each building that falls will be rebuilt and renovated. The big picture is still there and the game is still played. The same voices are heard and the same footsteps are felt.

I am Varuna You are Varuna He is Varuna She is Varuna We are Varuna They are Varuna.

Forever and always.

Forever and never.

It remembers the time of the plagues and the wars, when its walls were first built to keep out the horrors of death and the even darker horrors of life. It had been an oasis then, a safe haven; it had nurtured the hollow, blasted remains of things that were people, beneath the sickness and the hatred and the blue-hot ripping of radiation at the air, things that were people despite all that had transpired through the bloody, horrid years. It had held humanity to its bosom and comforted them through the darkest of nights, held its hand as it slowly crept out into the harsh light of day, picked up tools – linked hands, even; hands gnarled and aching with age, hands cracked and scabbed with wounds and sickness, hands of every color and size, hands so stained with blood that it was a wonder that their grip did not slip – and began rebuilding. And they had rebuilt. They had begun anew, against all odds.

It had seen lights emerge and light up the night that hung like an ebony guillotine, like a boulder on the precipice, over the heads of its children; it had watched the shadows that scared them be driven away by the hope of a brighter tomorrow and the conviction that the darkness that still remained – that still remained – could never spread again, would never spread again. It had been there when the circles were constructed and populated, the vows that would keep them eternal and unbroken made. It had weathered brutal storms and even harsher wars, housed the sick, fed the hungry, gave rest to the weary, been there for them when they could not be there and more. It had been something to live for, and it had lived. Despite everything, it had lived.

But now, now it is dying.

It is torn apart, bleeding out something that no light can reveal, no holoscreen or sensor can detect. It bleeds day after day, night after night, and as it feels itself ebbing away it looks up at the blank sky and cannot muster the strength to ask itself why. The darkness – not the shadows of night or light blocked by walls, or the moist, open maw of a slavering animal, no, but the far deeper black of the inside of a human skull, the jaggedness of soft organic flesh that hides within and around technology and tears, and tears – has returned, has always been returning, has crept up on it again like a beast in the night. Its children are fighting once more, are killing once more. It had been there when they promised to no longer kill and it is here now, when they are breaking that promise and turning on one another.
Paranormal. Normal.

Para- can mean "against" and "beside."

It bleeds out hope, it bleeds out verity, what sustained it for so long, and as it bleeds the circles break apart, the hands slide away and clench; they are slick with blood as they grip rifles that glow red, that shine in a city already blind with light and fire, nailing splinters of steel and disinfectant into its walls so that they crack and crumble to let the foreign horrors in. Its children call out as they are shot in its alleyways, dragged off to its prisons, wait for death in its many glittering forms; its children call out as they lie awake at night and think why, why, why but nothing answers save florescent skies. Its children cry out when they think of what is, what might be – but they no longer think of that which was. If they could remember the true darkness of the night before they would see, it thinks, they would see what was to come in the night quickly approaching and link hands once more, send pulses of light around the circular city and drive back the darkness. They would remember that the hands that built the city were of all colors and sizes but were alike in that they clawed their way back from the brink.

Circles, oddly enough, are eternal. While they can never be broken, they can never stay in one place. It all cycles, going around and around without a fixed beginning or end; a circle simply continues on, forever. At the same time, a thing cannot be unless it has had a beginning. It has to have a place to start if it is ever to move forward, a time to pass go. A paradox is formed, then: a circle will never end because it has never really begun.

Paradox means "against opinion."

Para- can mean "against" and "beside."

If they could only remember, it thinks. If they could only see the darkness –there is too much light. It cannot see.

Florescent skies and foreign nights. It bleeds and remembers what waits outside the city walls. If they could only remember.

They are still crying out; some voices speak of change but it will not be enough. It has come too late, or too early perhaps. It may be the right time if the time is right, but it is hard to tell what day it is. It no longer knows. It can no longer ask itself why or how.

It is dying, Varuna.

Forever and never.